Prefix Verbs Explained – “ausschließen”

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Hello everyone,

And welcome to a new episode of Prefix Verbs Explained.
Many thought the series was over and prefix verbs were all living happily ever after in our brains.
And one day, they might.
But there are still verbs aplenty for us to explore, and today we’ll take a look at

The Meanings of “ausschließen“

And this one is interesting not only because it’s useful in daily life and has a couple of nice relatives. It’s also a really great example for English prefix verbs that are hidden in plain sight.

Let’s start with schließen itself….

“Schließen” – The Lore

Many of you probably know that schließen means to close.
In many many contexts in daily life, zumachen is the more idiomatic choice, but you can find schließen in daily life as well, whenever a slightly more elevated or formal tone is needed.

• Bitte die Fenster abends schließen.
• Please close the windows in the evening.
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• Sonntag haben die Supermärkte in Berlin geschlossen.
• On Sunday, the supermarkets in Berlin are closed.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

What you might not know though is the lore.
Yes, words have lore now.
And schließen and close are actually kin.
They both come from the absurdly ancient Indo-European root *klau- which originally stood for some sort of hook or twisted branch that would be used to kind of bar or block something from moving. That’s how the idea of closing evolved.

The German branch of the family tree picked up an “s” somewhere and now we have schließen itself and also das Schloss (the lock, the castle) or der Schluss (the end, the conclusion).
And on the English side, we have words like closet (a closed off space), claustrophobia (fear of enclosure) or clavicle (bolt like bone) and most importantly for us today, the group around –clude.
So verbs like include, seclude, conclude or… wait for it… to exclude.

And if you’re now thinking “Wait, wasn’t ex-like the Latin version of aus-? ” then YES!
You’re spot on.
Ausschließen and exclude are quite literally the same word, if you go by the parts.
But does that bode well for the meanings?
Let’s find out.

The Meanings of “ausschließen”

Ausschließen has three meanings, and one of them is indeed to exclude.

• Thomas fühlt sich ausgeschlossen.
• Thomas feels excluded.
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• “Warum ist deine neue Freundin hier beim Arbeits-Meeting?”
  “Ich will sie von nichts ausschließen.”
• “Why is your new girlfriend here at the work meeting?”
  “I don’t want to exclude her from anything.”
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However, we need to note that ausschließen sounds a lot more “barring” and final. Like… leaving outside and locking the door from the inside.
It works well for excluding people like in the examples above and it also works for stuff like excluding certain foods from your diet, but it wouldn’t really work in a sense of just excluding an item from a list for a moment.

• Let’s exclude grammar for a second… what do you struggle with the most besides that?

In a context like this that’s more about just “putting aside”, ausschließen sounds WAY too definite and strong.
For a context like this, there are several better options, like rausnehmen, außen vor lassen or rephrase it with abgesehen von (aside from).

And it’s not that ausschließen would be wrong. It just sounds way too definite.

There’s another type of context though in which this super strict “exclusion” works perfectly fine – the idea of ruling something out.

• Ich schließe eine Kandidatur aus.
• I rule out a renewed candidacy. (I rule out running again)
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• Wir müssen ausschließen, dass das noch mal passiert.
• We have to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
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• “Kann man hier Einhörner sehen?”
  “Ausgeschlossen!”
• “Can you see unicorns here?”
  “Nah, impossible.”
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These examples would sound quite weird if we translated them with to exclude.
But when you think about it, the underlying idea is indeed the same. All three examples in essence talk about “excluding, removing” something from the set of possible options.

This use is actually quite common, so make sure to not just think of ausschließen as just plain to exclude.

Try to remember (and feel) the core idea and vibe that I tried to describe. Think of leaving something or someone outside and locking the door from the inside. Or at least saying “I’m sure X can’t come into our circle.”
That’s the vibe.

And in fact, there’s actually a third meaning that we can use as a mental hook: – to lock oneself out.

• Ich habe mich ausgeschlossen.
• I locked myself out.
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You know… you hear the sweet luring chants of the Sirens (who live in a flatshare above you). You go out the door and boom. It’s shut and you forgot your key inside again. Another 150 Euro for Chad vom Schlüsseldienst (locksmith service). Good thing he’s one of the Siren’s boyfriend, so he’s probably around anyway.

But yeah, those are the three uses of ausschließen:

And now, to wrap this up, let’s take a quick look at the direct offspring of ausschließen.

Words based on “ausschließen”

We already had ausgeschlossen in examples, but I want to mention it again here. Technically, it’s “just” the ge-form of the verb itself, but it’s fairly common as an adjective, and it can be about exclusion but also about “being ruled out”.

• “Ich fühle mich grad von dir ausgeschlossen!”
  “Ich bin auf Klo, Thomas. Mit Durchfall!”
• “I feel excluded by you right now!”
  “I’m on the toilet, Thomas. With diarrhea!”
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• “Was, wenn das Einhorn ins Haus kommt?”
  “Das ist ausgeschlossen. Wir haben alkoholfreies Bier vor alle Türen gegossen!”
• “What if the unicorn comes into the house?”
  “That’s impossible. We poured around alcohol-free beer in front of all doors.”
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

Then, we have the adverb ausschließlich, which is basically a more formal or fancy version of nur, that has the focus a bit more on the idea of being exclusive.

• Wir verwenden ausschließlich Bio-Zutaten für unser Eis.
• We only/exclusively use organic ingredients for our ice cream.
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

And what’s worth noting here is that ausschließlich pretty much comes BEFORE whatever it is referring to. So it cannot be at the end the way exclusively can.

It’s not a word you to use, but you’ll definitely see it here and there, and if you do a B2 or C1 exam, it’s a nice one to drop in.

Cool.
Next, up, we have the noun der Ausschluss. By itself, it refers to the act of excluding or ruling out.

• Die Verhandlung findet unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit statt.
• The trial is taking place with the pubic excluded. (“under exclusion of the public”)
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

And there are a couple of nice compounds that are not super common, but they’re really handy in a particular context: das Ausschlussprinzip and das Ausschlussverfahren, which literally translate to exclusion principle and exclusion process, respectively.

The translations are a bit misleading though, because in German, both words are about the process of selecting or finding a solution by excluding one option after another until only one is left.

Think for instance you want to decide what movie to watch with your date and you have a list of 10, and instead of picking one, you exclude one option after another based on some criteria until you’re left with “The Notebook”. I think the better translation is process of elimination or something.

• “Wie habt ihr euch für Schottland als Urlaubsziel entschieden?”
  “Nach dem Ausschlussverfahren.”
• “How did you decide on Scotland as your holiday destination?”
  “By process of elimination.”
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• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

And that’s it for today.
Hooray.

This was our look at the verb ausschließen and its little family.

I didn’t have time to prepare a quiz for this one yet, but you can still recap and practice the words we’ve learned with my Text Comprehension tool below.

Basically, it’ll create a short text for you on your level and it’ll work in all (or most of) the words we discussed and then quiz you on the text.
It’s quite a nice recap, that also trains you in this exam type reading comprehension, so give it a try.

And of course, if you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment.

I hope you enjoyed this one, have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

Want to read more Prefix Verb episodes?
Here’s the archive:

Prefix Verbs Explained – Series Page

And here’s the link to ausschließen  in my Prefix Verb Dictionary, where you can click through the family in a new and easy way.

“ausschließen” – Prefix Verb Dictionary

Text Comprehension Practice – “ausschließen”

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